Bruno's Supermarket is closing

Wednesday

Jul 23, 2014 at 11:00 PMJul 24, 2014 at 12:23 AM

The Bruno’s Supermarket on McFarland Boulevard is closing for good.The store has begun liquidating its remaining products, and Bruno’s owner Bill White said he expects the store to be closed within a few weeks.

By Patrick RupinskiBusiness Editor

The Bruno’s Supermarket on McFarland Boulevard is closing for good.The store has begun liquidating its remaining products, and Bruno’s owner Bill White said he expects the store to be closed within a few weeks. The closing follows a very challenging few months in which White said he tried to revive the store but ran into unforeseen challenges.He said he is still in discussions with a potential buyer of the land lease for the building and its equipment. He declined to identify the potential buyer, citing a confidentiality agreement.The store is the last supermarket operating under the Bruno’s name, and White said he expects the Bruno’s Supermarket name will be retired if the sale goes through.“I still think this is a very good location for a supermarket,” he said of the store, which is just south of University Mall and across the road from Midtown Village. “We just need someone with deeper pockets than me.”The Bruno’s building is about 35 years old and likely will have to be renovated, he said.That is something that White said he was unable to do, especially after the store’s refrigeration units broke this spring. Repeated efforts to repair the units failed, and the store had to discontinue carrying frozen foods and most refrigerated items. That, in turn, hurt sales and customer volume, resulting in the final downward spiral for Bruno’s, a name that once was identified with an Alabama company that had more than 300 supermarkets across the Southeast, operating under different names.During the last several months, the McFarland Bruno’s permanently laid off workers and reduced its hours of operation.White acquired the store as Bruno’s Inc. last year when it emerged from its third bankruptcy since 2000. In January, the store installed the city’s first in-supermarket growler station to sell tapped craft beers to take home. That helped attract customers, but the beer sales ended with the refrigeration malfunction. He said the store was doing well until the refrigeration units broke.White said the operation of just one store made it difficult to survive once it was hit with unexpected expenses.He noted supermarket chains with multiple stores can survive an expensive breakdown of equipment at one store because they can rely on the other stores’ sales to carry them until major repairs or equipment replacement occurs. That was something he was unable to do, he said.On Wednesday, the store posted liquidation sale signs in its front windows, indicating everything was 30 percent off the listed price.The last few decades have been a tough time for Bruno’s Inc., as the state’s once-dominant supermarket chain underwent changing owners and three bankruptcies that resulted in stores being closed or sold until only the McFarland Bruno’s was left.The McFarland store originally opened as an Albertson’s supermarket in the 1980s. Birmingham-based Bruno’s Inc. later acquired it as it expanded its footprint in West Alabama.Bruno’s started as a single grocery store opened by Joe Bruno in Birmingham in 1932. Bruno and his brothers later opened more stores and larger stores in the Birmingham area. In the 1970s, the company issued stock that was publicly traded, but the Bruno family continued to manage the company.In 1995, the New York investment firm of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts purchased the company in a leveraged buyout, but three years later it filed to reorganize Bruno’s under federal bankruptcy court protection. In 2001, Bruno’s emerged from the reorganization with its sale to Royal Ahold, a Dutch holding company. Four years later, Royal Ahold sold Bruno’s Inc. to Lone Star Funds, a private investment group based in Texas.Lone Star filed the second bankruptcy organization for Bruno’s in 2009. More of the chain’s stores were sold or closed at that time, and in 2011, the remaining stores were acquired by C&S Wholesale Grocers, a New Hampshire-based grocery wholesaler.C&S sold the supermarkets to a new company founded by White and members of his family in 2011, who renamed the stores Belle Foods.In 2012, Belle Foods filed for a third reorganization. Three of the Tuscaloosa Belle Foods were acquired by Mississippi-based Vowells supermarkets and were renamed, while White acquired the remaining Tuscaloosa store and returned it to the Bruno’s Supermarket name.

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